Jiu Kuang (Wine Mad) is here attributed, as it is with the other existing versions with this title, to the famous poet, drinker and recluse Ruan Ji (210-263).2 As the main introduction to this melody, in Shen Qi Mi Pu (1425), explains, Jiu Kuang is one of the most popular melodies in the modern qin repertoire, available in over at least 20 recordings. However, for centuries before the 1950s it had gone out of the active repertoire: in written form it survives in only seven traditional handbooks, the earliest being Shen Qi Mi Pu (1425), the last being Lixing Yuanya (1618).3 Of these seven, the last three all have lyrics related to those discussed here. I play this 1589 version because to me it seems the most singable.

This question is particularly important because the triple rhythms commonly heard in modern performances of Jiu Kuang have led a number of writers and even scholars to come up with some new theories about rhythm in early Chinese music. These people apparently were not aware that the idea of triple rhythms for Jiu Kuang came exclusively from Yao Bingyan.

According to what Yao Bingyan wrote in an article on this subject,7 when he originally reconstructed Jiu Kuang in the 1950s he used double rhythm; it was later that he changed this to triple rhythms. He knew that triple rhythms were not a known part of traditional Chinese music, but he observed that there were triple rhythms in poetry, the Tang qin master Chen Zhuo described music that could be played triple rhythm,8 and Jiu Kuang sounded good in triple rhythm. As a result, he concluded that a correct interpretation required triple rhythms. As mentioned, since then other players have almost exclusively followed this, though perhaps making the tempo irregular, so as to represent the idea of drunkenness.

Yao's reasoning is very interesting. Sometimes I have played Jiu Kuang that way and enjoyed the triple rhythms. However, I never found Yao's reasoning convincing enough to be comfortable with the fact that everyone was playing it that way. And in particular, if I was going to start using triple rhythms I wanted to find out whether they would work with the other surviving versions of Jiu Kuang.

As it turns out, it is difficult but not impossible to put the related melody Liu Shang into triple rhythms, but triple rhythms sound extremely strange when applied to the surviving sung versions. So without saying Yao is wrong, for my own recording of the 1425 version I used predominantly 4/4 rhythms.9

As for the sung versions, I found the 1589 version particularly interesting because to my mind it turns the SQMP melody into a quite singable drinking song. Its preface is somewhat different from those in SQMP and Xilutang Qintong, but it still concerns Ruan Ji and the other sages trying to stay away from the machinations of the Sima clan, who controlled the Jin dynasty. The lyrics can easily be sung in duple rhythm, but sound strange in triple rhythm. The basic theme of the lyrics is that we enjoy drink, but we drink in a refined manner because we are gentlemen; this is different from the way the vulgar masses drink. The section titles are also quite evocative.

As for the compiler of the 1589 version, Yang Lun, it is known that he was a recluse in Nanjing.10 Unfortunately, little else is known, and there are no records indicating how this or any of the sung versions of Jiu Kuang came about, or on what occasions they might have been sung. Since there are three surviving sung versions, the earliest dated 1585 and the last one dated 1618, one can speculate that at one time there were more versions, but that if they were written down, the tablature and/or lyrics did not survive. I have not been able to make the version of 1585 singable; the one from 1618 is very similar to 1589.

As with other qin songs, Jiu Kuang is very word intensive: the lyrics are attached to the music throughout, the Chinese characters (syllables) applied to the music largely on the basis of one character for each right hand stroke, plus for certain left hand plucks. So to give the voice a break during the seven sections, when I created my own version of the Jiu Kuang song I decided to add an instrumental interlude between each section. These instrumental interludes come entirely from the 1425 version.

Although the 1425 version of Jiu Kuang was divided into only four sections, the fourth section was by far the longest. So sub-dividing the fourth section into four separate sections allowed the 1425 SQMP to have seven sections, just as does the 1589 version; both add a coda. This combined version begins with 1425 Section 1, then playing 1589 section 1; it continues like this, ending with the 1589 coda. Because the 1589 sections are sung but the 1425 sections are not, simply by listening one can clearly distinguish between the two versions, thereby gaining a basic understanding of the relationship between them.

This also makes it possible to assess more deeply the appropriateness of using triple rhythms for Jiu Kuang.

2.
Ruan Ji 阮籍 himself is also said to have played the qin, though some sources apparently say it was the zheng zither.
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3.Tracing Jiu KuangZha Fuxi's Guide, 3/31/36 and 19/180/--; see also the
appendix with the 1425 introduction. In sum, the seven versions are musically related. 1552 is a copy of 1425, but otherwise no two are identical. The 1539 and 1525 versions have more differences from SQMP (1425) than do their versions of most pieces from SQMP Folio I. The last three all have lyrics, but none of these can be matched to the SQMP music.
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5.
姚丙炎 Yao Bingyan. There are many recordings by Yao and others, all with metal strings (see my comments under silk strings. Bell Yong, Celestial Airs of Antiquity, 1997, has a transcription and some discussion, but there is no mention of the metal strings or of the oddity of the triple rhythm.

Xu Jian, QSCB, Chapter 3.B. (pp.36-7) mentions the triple rhythms as though they are an inherent part of the melody, rather than Yao Bingyan's interpretation from the 1950s.
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6.
By tradition qin melodies are learned from a teacher, not from tablature. If a melody does not change through several tablatures this may be evidence that it was played from the tablature. There is some discussion of this in the article Historically Informed Performance (see in particular the section Traditional Chinese HIP?).
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7.Yao Bingyan's own justification for triple rhythms in Jiu KuangSee 音樂藝術 Yinyue Yishu, 1981 #5; this and some other related articles by Yao are listed in the bibliography.
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9.Possibility of triple rhythms during the Tang or Song dynastySince no one who has played Liu Shang has ever suggested it should have triple rhythm, and since clearly the qin song version of Jiu Kuang would never have been sung in triple rhythm, an argument that triple rhythms are historically appropriate for the 1425 Jiu Kuang might center on the fact that its tablature is in SQMP, Folio I, melodies for which Zhu Quan said he could find no players. Thus one cannot completely rule out the possibility that at some time prior to the Ming dynasty the melody truly was played in triple rhythms, and the double rhythms used in the Ming dynasty were their incorrect interpretation. However, I do not know of anyone who has made this argument, nor of any specific evidence to support it.
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12.
(The Chinese and English lyrics also available as a .pdf file). Tong Kin-Woon helped with a literal translation of these lyrics; this literal translation has been published in Charles A. Coulombe, ed., The Muse in the Bottle; New York, Citadel Press, 2002 (more at Kensington Books). The poem has numerous literary references. For example, *"a pool of lees" refers to the story that the last two Shang kings had a wine pond with a mound of wine. **Liu Ling, Bi Zhuo and Tao Qian were all famous drinkers.

I subsequently modified the English lyrics here so that they could be sung along with the 1589 melody. Although the 1589 melody has lyrics all the way through, instrumental interludes can be added by alternating the 7 sections into which the SQMP version is here divided with the 7 sections of the sung 1589 version, below. This is what I do in my recording, linked below. (In fact the first three lines here can be sung with the opening of the SQMP version.)
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13.
The Chinese says 杜康 "Du Kang", the name of a famous wine maker of the 4th c. BCE.
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14.References to 襄陽歌 Xiangyang GeXiangyang Ge is a poem by 李白 Li Bai (701 -762), by Li Bai, famous as a drinker as well as as a poet. The poem includes several references to drinking. The present example is:
百年三萬六千場，會須一飲三百觴,
which is a paraphrase of the line "百年三萬六千日，一日須傾三百杯。"
in 襄陽歌 Xiangyang Ge.

The lyrics of Li Bai's poem are set for qin in at least two handbooks, dated 1579 and
1618; the two versions are melodically unrelated. The 襄陽歌 lyrics are included here with the former.
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21.Drunks fall down without assistThe original is, 玉山自倒非人推. 玉山 Jade Mountain was 嵇康
"Xi Kang, known for stumbling when drunk. So the passage is literally, "Xi Kang could fall down without anyone pushing him". This line is also from
Xiangyang Ge.
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22.Calligraphy and drunken verseThe title of this verse, 花牋草掃, literally means "elegant paper and grass (script) painting", while "龍蛇" in the first line, literally "dragons and snakes", is also a calligraphy reference. Li Bai was said to have been an excellent calligrapher (especially when inebriated), and the whole passage refers to well-known stories about Li Bai, quoting in particular some lines in a long poem by Du Fu, 飲中八仙歌 Song of the Eight Drinking Immortals, which tell of him passing out in a bar and so missing an audience with the emperor:

李白斗酒詩百篇，長安市上酒家眠。
天子呼來不上船，自稱臣是酒中仙。)

(These two lines followed a couplet about
Su Jin,
"蘇晉長齋繡佛前，醉中往往愛逃禪。")
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